


names called out across the water

by Cerberusia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adultery, Classics, M/M, POV First Person, Pureblood Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry, Draco; a cottage on the moors; the explosive revelation of a long-standing affair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	names called out across the water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallbrownfrog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallbrownfrog/gifts).



> **Content/Enticements:** Adultery, middle-aged men in love, unfounded speculation about Pureblood traditions, first person POV.
> 
>  **Author's Notes:** A big thank you to the mods for letting me have a few days' extension to get this one polished off! Beta-ed by the lovely B, title from Siken. Abbott and Mansfield are the authors of an old and widely-used Classical Greek grammar which is usually referred to simply by the authors' names.

When one thinks of a love-nest, warm and sunny locations spring to mind: Spain, the coast of France, a Greek island. The beach.

Well, the rain here certainly seems to be trying to form a lake. I give the Yorkshire moors a sour look over the rim of my teacup.

Harry is clattering about in the kitchen, preparing dinner and making quite the production of it. His enthusiasm for and skill in cooking have come up occasionally, but only now do I appreciate it. It was just something one learnt as a father, he had said. I had raised an eyebrow and he had sighed fondly: well, maybe not if you have people to do all that for you.

Raindrops trickle down the windowpane in hypnotising patterns, and I watch them idly, my mind occupied with far weightier matters.

The letter on the table is on heavy cream stationery, embossed with the Malfoy crest: the sort of stationery which demands an elegant hand and carefully composed words. But the short message it contains is a harried scrawl, without a proper salutation or farewell.

_Draco,_

_Come home._

_A._

The very fact that the owl could find the cottage told me who was the sender even before I felt the weight of the envelope or saw the familiar handwriting. This place is not only Unplottable, but so utterly hidden that they don't even get the Daily Prophet owls - not that I especially want to read what they're printing about me right now.

 _Come home_. If only it were that easy.

~*~*~

Astoria and I met in the new millennium. I had barely noticed her at school, not having interacted that much with her sister Daphne; my memory of her was a vague impression of glossy dark hair, large pale eyes and features which seemed too small for her face. No great beauty, slightly-above-average marks. Very respectable, of course - and after the war, respectable was just what I needed.

So there we all were at the Parkinsons', all the old set, for Ermintrude Parkinson's birthday do, and up came Daphne dragging her sister by the hand. It was clear at once that they were siblings, and though Daffy had still got the better share of looks, Astoria had grown into her features.

"Draco, darling, this is Astoria - you remember her, don't you?"

"Of course I do," I said warmly and largely mendaciously - I had quite forgotten even her name - taking her hand in mine to kiss it.

"Asty fancied you _terribly_ at school," Daphne told me conspiratorially. 'Asty' was too well-bred to turn scarlet, but her ears turn very pink indeed.

"Daffy!" she hissed. "What a thing to say!"

"Not my fault you don't keep your diary under better protection," said Daphne, uncowed. That's Daffy, utterly unembarrassable. 'Shame is a bourgeois notion', she liked to say.

"Please," I interrupted, "may I say that if it _were_ to be true - not, of course, that such a lovely young lady as yourself would ever stoop to a man whose hairline is already beginning to recede at twenty - I should be deeply flattered." Chuckles all around, and Astoria relaxed somewhat. Her smile was utterly charming.

"In fact," I said with a sudden burst of inspiration as the orchestra started up a waltz, "I should like to repay the compliment by asking you for this dance."

Astoria didn't stop smiling - nor blushing - the entire way through. We were married within the year and a respectable handful of years later produced a son.

They do say that when a man marries his mistress, he creates a job vacancy. I suppose it is therefore fitting that it was then that Harry Potter came back into my life.

Our affair began as most pedestrian office romances do: you are forced by the job to spend time together; you accomodate each other; you start to notice the curve of your coworker's neck, the eroticism of their bared forearms; you exchange glances which last a little too long; alcohol is involved in the long-delayed culmination of several months of undeclared courting.

We were aided, perhaps, by not being able to discuss our work with anyone else, including our spouses - for yes, Harry was also married at this time, with three freckled children, the youngest the same age as my Scorpius. Our affair seemed like merely a natural extension of this furtiveness: a private matter quite separate from our home lives.

Gradually, of course, the boundary began to erode - not that anyone noticed. Our switch to first-name basis passed with barely a comment ('I'm not calling you Malfoy in bed,' said Harry, 'it feels like I'm talking to your father'); our increased time-sharing was easily dismissed as typical of Unspeakable partners. In fact, I am proud to say that the people around us didn't know a thing about it until last week - excepting Astoria, of course, but then she had her own _tendres_ to attend to.

No, it never became so obvious that a nosy coworker was compelled to point out how _chummy_ we were getting; we were entirely circumspect. Rather, after about a year of work partnership and casual sex, I found myself sitting in my study contemplating the battered Classical Greek grammar which I had been taught from prior to Hogwarts and thinking _If only Harry were here, I would be entertained._

Why Harry? My wife was perfectly entertaining on her own terms, and educated in Classical Greek herself to boot. But I didn't want erudition that night: I wanted to see Harry's face as he decried Pureblood pretentiousness, but flicked through the grammar anyway, his forehead corrugated in incomprehension.

Harry himself, the silly fool, blurted out two weeks later right after fucking me over the desk that he was in love with me. Naturally, I then had to admit it in return. More than a decade on, I still cherish the memory of his face.

That face is older now, with a touch of grey at the temples - normal for Muggles of our age, I'm told, but a sign of premature aging in wizards. I suspect that my own hair has more white than white-blond than I might care to admit. I briefly picture the two of us as old men, and find that the image comes more easily than it used to.

Harry carries dinner to the table, and I am overcome by a wave of tenderness for the tiny crows-feet at the corners of his eyes. I let him put the dish down before running my knuckles down his cheek; he closes his eyes and leans into the touch. Then we get on with the business of dinner.

That night, as we lie side by side in the dark, I feel Harry put his hand on my pillow in that way of his that signals a desire to talk about something. I turn obligingly onto my side and strive to make out his features in the gloom.

"Are we selfish, do you think?" Harry, bless him, looks honestly concerned by this prospect.

"Yes," I say, "yes, terribly selfish." And I kiss his worried eyes closed, kiss his pursed mouth open, and do not permit him to speak, much less worry, for some time.

~*~*~

Come morning, I wake up to find Harry staring at the picture of our children: James, Lily, Albus and Scorpius all in the one photo, smiling and waving at the camera.

"It would have been better if we'd waited," he says. Until they were full-grown, he means, and able to cope with the controversy as adults, not schoolchildren.

I sit up and put my arms around him, pressing my mouth to his shoulder and breathing in the soft sleepy smell of his skin. _But we couldn't_ , I say with my body, _we just couldn't wait any longer_.

For once I emerge downstairs first, and have already taken out the yoghurt from the fridge by the time I notice the letter on the kitchen table. I mix the yoghurt with oats and honey as I consider the letter thoughtfully, listening with half an ear to the sound of running water from upstairs. I sit down to eat my concoction and finish my mug of Earl Grey with my gaze still fixed on it.

At last, breakfast finished and bowl and mug washed the Muggle way to draw it out, I can stall no longer: I seize the letter and open it with one brief incantation, like performing a healing charm briskly to ease the sting.

Astoria's missive is brief:

_8PM - A_

But underneath, the seal on my fate—

_Papa, please talk to Mummy. S._

I'd accuse Astoria of using our son to manipulate me, but I freely admit that it was probably Scorpius' idea. That boy really did take the best of each of us.

"Can't put it off any longer, eh?" Harry leans shirtless on the doorframe, hair sticking up in every direction. After all these years, I still feel my heart throb at his morning vulnerability. This is what he trusts me enough to share with me; me and now no-one else.

"It's about time," I say with a shrug. "She doesn't seem angry."

"Ginny must be absolutely furious," says Harry, looking rather ashamed of himself.

Neither of us have previously mentioned the possibility of talking to Ginny, simply because neither of us _wants_ to talk to Ginny. Harry calls it cowardice; I call it pragmatism.

"Probably," I say. "Certainly, in fact. But you knew she would be."

"Yes," he sighs, "yes, I did. I've made my bed, and all that. I just wish we could have done like you and Astoria."

"For that, you would have needed a different wife." I fold up Astoria's letter again. "Things work differently in Pureblood circles, as I keep reminding you."

"As you keep reminding me." Harry's tone is fond. "You also keep promising to teach me Greek, which you still haven't got round to." He briefly skims his knuckles over mine.

"I thought you weren't interested," I say, not sure if he's serious. Trying to teach him French had _not_ gone well.

"I'm sort-of interested; the main issue was time. But since we're now stuck in this cottage for at least another week..." Harry shrugs. "I might not take to it in the end - you know I'm not good with languages - but I want to get an idea of what you love about it so much." I smile at him, touched by his earnestness.

"After dinner, then," I say, "and after this call to Asty."

"How's Scorpius taking it?" Harry asks, taking out bread for toast. I admire the muscles in his back as I answer:

"Don't know yet, though I doubt he's having weeping fits - his level-headedness is one of his most delightful traits."

"Inherited from his mother, of course," says Harry drily; I make a face, but can't disagree.

"I'll ask Asty about it tonight. I'll enquire about your offspring too, since Scorpius is so fond of Albus and Astoria is so fond of the gossip mill."

"Yeah, thanks." Harry is looking out the kitchen window onto the heather-covered moors, a mist of purple over the pale moor-grass. The sky is clear for once, allowing the moor to fully display its rolling rugged beauty, but he's clearly not appreciating it. He says, absently, "James is probably going mental."

"Probably," I admit. "But Astoria would have told us if things were dire. We _are_ here for the express purpose of letting your family cool off."

Harry nods, but doesn't answer. I know how he feels: after two weeks away from my son I miss him quite dearly - and I don't have the burden of wondering whether I've destroyed my relationship with him.

I wave my fingers and whisper, and Harry's attention is drawn to the butter knife tugging itself out of his hand to float to the butter. I watch Harry's face change from confusion to pleasure as he realises what it's tracing - a heart, slightly asymmetrical - into the butter.

He's still smiling as he brings his buttered toast to the table and bites into it. I smile back and let our slippered feet brush under the table.

~*~*~

Eight o'clock on the dot, after dinner has been eaten and the dishes washed up and Harry has been sent to my study with instructions to find the leather-bound Abbott and Mansfield and start reading it, I stick the Calling-Poker - so much more elegant than the old-fashioned method of sticking your head in the fire - upright in the coals in the fireplace and make the call to the Manor, specifically Astoria's study.

Astoria picks up immediately, which is usually a bad sign - not that there's anything usual about this situation. She's not smiling, but I wouldn't expect her to. She doesn't look tired, because ladies of our sort don't, but she looks tight at the edges, her skin stretched just a little too taut. I suspect that just out of the frame of our call is a glass of something strong. I would probably have the same if there were any alcohol in the cottage.

"You aren't going to come home," she says immediately upon looking me over.

"Not yet," I say. "Harry and I, we're still...coming to terms with it. Waiting for the hubbub to die down."

"So you can reignite it all over again when you reappear? Frankly, at this point I think that reemerging from hermitude would be the better option just because it would get the dramatic reveal over and done with, then the world can get on with getting over it." She brings her glass to her mouth.

"You're a wise woman," I acknowledge. "You know me, I'd have gone out in style and been attending parties within the week with Harry on my arm, but Harry doesn't have the understanding with his wife that I have with you. He's terribly afraid of her reaction - entirely justifiably. And no doubt the press will be twice as hard on him as they will be on me."

"To hell with the press," says Astoria sharply. "They can do as they like - and they'll have to, because the Malfoy name isn't much use among them these days. His wife is the real concern; what a damn fool he was not to arrange it with her! These Half-bloods, _really_."

"It's a different world," I say with a helpless shrug. "Apparently men having mistresses just isn't the done thing."

"Imbeciles," she says, but with exasperation rather than heat. "You have rotten taste in men, Draco; Theo at least had the good sense not to marry someone who wasn't of our sort."

"Or at all - very convenient!" I lean forward in my chair and adopt an ironical tone. "I suppose you'll want to wait for things to die down a bit before announcing Theo as your new paramour, but really - I'd say it'd be better to get it all over with now, not excite the masses again in a few months and wade through it all for a second time."

Astoria laughs tiredly, acknowledging her own argument.

"I'm minded to do just that, you know," she admits. "Really shock them all, so that nothing I do in the future could possibly top it."

"That's the spirit," I say encouragingly, and she manages a wan smile.

"To hell with the press!" she says with conviction. "And when the inevitable blackmail attempts come, we shall say - what's that Muggle's line again - publish and be damned!"

"Publish and be damned," I agree solemnly, holding up an imaginary glass in toast. Astoria holds up hers, and we mime clinking them together.

"So," she says, setting down her glass again, "how long do you think you'll need?"

"A week," I say confidently.

"A week?" she raises her eyebrow. "You're very certain for a man who isn't following the newspapers."

"Didn't we just agree that they could publish and be damned? No, I think that's how long Harry will take to gird his loins to talk to his wife. And children - speaking of which, how's Scorpius coping?"

"Impeccably," says Astoria with satisfaction. I smile.

"Naturally. I take it you judge it safe to give him our address?"

"If he's planning a teenage temper fit, he's hiding it _very_ well," she assures me. "I'll put it in my next letter. I'll give him your love too." She takes a thoughtful sip of her drink. "A week? I'll hold you to it."

Harry is waiting in my study, no doubt flipping dubiously through Abbott and Mansfield. I picture the crease just between his eyebrows; I picture smoothing it away.

"Absolutely," I promise. "And with a bit of luck, he'll even have picked up the basics of Greek!" Astoria, having previously heard the saga of Harry's attempt at learning French, snickers in a ladylike fashion, and we end the conversation with both of us smiling. I treasure the memory of that smile, of the beautiful charming wife I am giving up - and of the dear friend who will remain.

A confused-sounding utterance comes from the study. I stand up, smiling, and wave a hand to close the curtains on the black, silent moors. Next week, we return to Life and its complications: wives-soon-to-be-ex, children-maybe-distraught, scrutiny-sure-to-be-judgemental - but here in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, with woolly sheep the only living souls for miles around, the most complicated thing in our cottage tonight will be Classical Greek grammar and Harry's ecstatic curses when we reavow our love in the best way we know how.

**Author's Note:**

> You can leave a comment here or [on Livejournal](http://hd-erised.livejournal.com/5829.html).


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